Martha King’s Lumberjack Training: Explosive Strength Without a Gym
UPLIFT IRON CLUBMartha King does not build explosive strength with a conventional “gym-only” routine. The three-time U.S. women’s STIHL TIMBERSPORTS champion is also a working arborist, which means her normal week already includes climbing, hauling, cutting, stabilizing and controlling awkward loads in environments that never behave like a perfectly balanced barbell.
That makes her training useful to lifters even if they never plan to swing an axe competitively. King’s approach is a reminder that usable power is more than a big one-rep max. It combines strength, timing, grip, footwork, repeatability and the ability to produce force quickly while staying in control.
In a recent interview, King described a routine built around the work itself, exact practice of TIMBERSPORTS events, loaded hill walking, short sprints and an unusually strong emphasis on deceleration. The lesson is not to copy an elite lumberjack’s week literally. It is to understand why each piece works—and steal the principles that transfer to strength and athletic training.
Her Arborist Job Is Already Full-Body Strength Training
King’s day job is not separate from her athletic preparation. Arborist work repeatedly asks for the qualities that matter in chopping and sawing: grip endurance, shoulder stability, trunk stiffness, pulling strength and the ability to make force while standing in imperfect positions.
That is different from saying manual labor automatically replaces intelligent training. Work can be repetitive and fatigue can be unpredictable. But it gives King an enormous base of task-specific volume. She spends hours handling tools, managing body position and transferring force through her hands into an external object. For a TIMBERSPORTS athlete, that is far more specific than adding random accessory exercises simply because they burn.
Lifters can borrow the principle without becoming arborists. If your sport or goal demands a quality, expose yourself to that quality regularly. A climber needs grip and pulling volume. A strongman needs carries and awkward-object control. A field athlete needs acceleration and braking. The closer an exercise is to the actual demand, the less “fancy” it has to be.
King’s work also highlights a neglected part of strength: maintaining position while force changes direction. Trees, ropes and tools do not load the body symmetrically. That challenges the trunk and hips in ways a fixed machine often does not. Carries, offset loading, cable work and controlled unilateral exercises can give ordinary lifters a safer, measurable version of that challenge.
Competition Practice Is Skill Training, Not Just Conditioning
King also practices the actual TIMBERSPORTS disciplines, often moving through them in competition order and spending extra time on whichever event needs the most work. That sounds obvious, but it is one of the clearest distinctions between training for performance and simply exercising hard.
Chopping is a skill. So is sawing. The athlete has to create power through a precise path while controlling rhythm, stance, hand position and tool angle. Getting stronger can raise the ceiling, but strength does not automatically teach the nervous system how to express that force in the task.
The same logic applies in the gym. If you want a bigger squat, you need to squat often enough to make the movement efficient. If you want to throw farther, jump higher or sprint faster, general strength supports those goals but cannot replace high-quality practice of the actual action.
King’s “weakest event first” mindset is useful too. Many lifters build sessions around what they already enjoy. Performance improves faster when the limiting skill receives fresh, focused work before fatigue turns practice into survival. That might mean putting technique deadlifts before accessories, practicing jumps before leg volume, or addressing a weak press pattern early rather than tacking it onto the end.
The 45-Pound Pack Builds a Different Kind of Work Capacity
When King is away from her normal equipment, one of her substitutes is brutally simple: hike hills with a 45-pound pack. It is not a perfect replica of chopping, but it preserves several qualities she needs—leg drive, trunk endurance, grip and shoulder tolerance from carrying gear, and the ability to keep producing force while breathing hard.
Loaded walking sits in an interesting middle ground. It is not maximal strength work and it is not pure endurance. The external load raises the muscular demand while the long duration forces the body to repeat submaximal effort. For lifters who are strong but gas out quickly during carries, sled work or higher-rep compounds, that type of work capacity can be valuable.
The mistake would be assuming that because an elite athlete uses 45 pounds, everyone should start there. Rucking volume adds stress to the feet, calves, knees, hips and back. A better progression is to begin with a load you can carry while maintaining normal posture and walking mechanics, then increase either time, terrain or weight—not all three at once.
For strength athletes, one loaded walk per week can be plenty. Keep it away from your hardest squat or deadlift session if it noticeably fatigues the legs. The goal is to become harder to exhaust, not to arrive at every barbell workout already cooked.
Short Hill Sprints Add the Speed Side of Power
King also uses short sprints when she needs a simple conditioning option. That matters because explosive strength is not only about how much force you can create—it is about how quickly you can create it.
Heavy squats and pulls develop high force. Short sprints ask the athlete to apply force rapidly, coordinate the limbs at speed and repeat explosive contacts without turning the session into a long endurance grind. Uphill sprinting can reduce top speed slightly while still demanding aggressive projection and leg drive.
For a lifter, the useful dose is small. Think a thorough warm-up followed by four to eight short efforts with generous recovery, not a twenty-minute sufferfest. Once sprint mechanics deteriorate, the session stops being high-quality speed work and becomes conditioning.
Anyone who has not sprinted in years should progress carefully. Hamstrings, calves and Achilles tendons see forces that ordinary lifting may not prepare them for. Fast strides, easy hill accelerations and submaximal efforts are smarter entry points than trying to reproduce an elite athlete’s intensity on day one.
The transfer is straightforward: strength gives you force potential; speed work teaches you to access more of that force quickly. For sports, strongman events and any task where you must move yourself or an object fast, both sides matter.
“Go Fast” Only Works If You Can Brake
One of the most interesting pieces of King’s philosophy is her focus on braking. She uses the analogy that a car can only use its speed safely if its brakes can handle it. In athletic terms, acceleration is only half the problem. You also need enough eccentric strength and coordination to absorb force, stop, reposition and attack again.
That is obvious in field sports, but it matters in strength training too. A powerful chop has to be controlled through its path. A heavy carry requires repeated foot contacts without losing position. A clean or snatch demands force absorption when the bar is received. Even a jump is incomplete if the athlete cannot land well.
Lifters can train this without elaborate drills. Controlled eccentric split squats, step-downs, snap-downs, low-level landing drills and short accelerations into deliberate stops all teach the body to accept force. The load should be low enough that positions stay clean. Braking work is not useful if every rep ends in a knee collapse or uncontrolled stumble.
This also explains why King’s training feels more “athletic” than a list of gym exercises. She is not collecting movements; she is solving performance problems. What force does the event require? How fast must it happen? Can she repeat it? Can she control it? Where is the weakest link?
That framework is worth stealing. Your program does not need to look like lumberjack training, but it should answer the same questions for whatever you are trying to improve.
The UIC take: Martha King’s training is a strong example of specificity layered on top of general capacity. Her job supplies enormous real-world strength volume. Event practice sharpens skill. Loaded hills build work capacity. Short sprints maintain explosive intent. Deceleration work keeps speed usable and controlled. None of those pieces is magical by itself; their value comes from how directly they support the demands of her sport.
For ordinary lifters, the lesson is not to abandon the gym for an axe and a forest. Keep the basic strength work, then add small doses of training that force your strength to become useful: carries, loaded walking, jumps or sprints, precise skill practice and controlled deceleration. A bigger engine matters more when the rest of the machine can actually use it.
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